Compuware announced Wednesday it has purchased application performance monitoring vendor dynaTrace for $256 million in cash, a move that builds upon its 2009 acquisition of Gomez and places it in closer competition with rivals such as CA Technologies and BMC.

Earlier this year, Compuware rebranded its APM tools under the Gomez name, jettisoning the Vantage brand. Along with dynaTrace's technology, Compuware customers will now have the ability to track application performance throughout the development, testing and production lifecycle, according to a statement.

In the last category, customers will gain "unmatched" application performance monitoring, from back-end servers to end-users' browsers and every step in between, according to Compuware. That job has become more complex given the rise of public and private cloud services, as well as an explosion in mobile device usage.

DynaTrace has more than 400 customers, including Sony, Linkedin and Thomson Reuters, according to a statement.

Compuware has "no major technology or personnel changes planned" for dynaTrace, it adds.